


Biting Your Own Neck

by Haberdasher



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (specifically use of it/its pronouns for people who don't use them), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Archivist Jonathan Sims, Canonical Character Death, Character Death, Dimension Travel, Doppelganger, Eventual Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Character Death, It's Not Paranoia If They're Really Out To Get You, Jonathan Sims Has Trust Issues, M/M, Martin Blackwood is ready to cut a bitch, Misgendering, Names, POV Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Paranoia, The Mechanisms Were The Archivist's College Band, Tim Stoker is a Mechanisms Fan, Time Travel, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-15
Updated: 2020-12-12
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:55:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25923202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haberdasher/pseuds/Haberdasher
Summary: Mid-season 2, Jon’s life is abruptly upended by the intrusion of two unexpected and eerily familiar visitors.
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood & Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 137
Kudos: 352





	1. Chapter 1

“...I somehow managed to live through one horror movie. I have no intention of going looking for another.

Statement ends.”

Another spider statement. _Lovely._ Just what Jon needed right now, for childhood trauma to be drudged up and mixed with more recent trauma.

Was that what was waiting in the tunnels, what had killed Gertrude? The idea of spiders managing to fire a gun seemed absurd at a glance, but from what Jon knew, he wouldn’t put it past them.

Or... or given what this statement suggested, perhaps the spiders wouldn’t have to be the ones pulling the trigger. Perhaps they could just force someone else to do it, have their hands move of their own accord like Mr. Harlow described happening to himself...

Jon shuddered a little as he thought of it, took a breath as he prepared to make his typical post-statement remarks, and then stopped cold as he heard something behind him.

No, not something-- _someone_. Someone trying to keep their breathing soft and shallow, perhaps hoping to avoid being heard, but no such luck.

Jon stood up from his seat and grabbed the nearest loose object on his desk as he turned around. If this was whoever had killed Gertrude, be it someone he worked with or the thing that lurked in the tunnels, come to kill another Archivist... well. He might go down, but he wasn’t going to make it easy for them.

Jon had been prepared to face any number of abnormal things when he turned around. He knew whatever was in the tunnels was almost certainly some flavor of supernatural, was very probably not even human, and the fact that his office door remained closed, that there was no evidence that somebody had simply sneaked up behind him while he was lost in a statement, supported that belief. Jon had seen beings consumed or created by supernatural powers before, knew they might well look unlike any sentient being most of the world even knew existed.

Jon still wasn’t prepared to come face to face with a being that looked startlingly like himself.

It wasn’t an exact replica of him, that much was clear at a glance. The hair was longer and more tinged with gray streaks than Jon’s own, the clothes were more ragged than anything Jon would ever wear outside of his own flat, and it had scars that Jon didn’t have, testaments to injuries Jon himself had never suffered. (The worm scars were there, though, and as Jon glanced between his hand and that of his doppelganger, he confirmed that the locations were identical.) But there was no denying the similarity between the two. It was, perhaps, like looking an identical twin in the eye--not quite right, not quite him, but close, eerily close.

Jon’s doppelganger wasn’t alone, either. Standing next to it was a being that resembled Martin, but again with a few details decidedly off--a thick white streak in his hair that Martin certainly didn’t have, clothes worn and dirty while Martin always wore something significantly more presentable to work. But if you weren’t paying attention, weren’t already on guard, the changes might be subtle enough that it could fool somebody into thinking it _was_ Martin.

Behind them, a yellow door that made Jon’s heart sink at the sight of it closed and disappeared from sight.

If Michael was in on this... well, Jon didn’t know what that meant exactly, but it definitely wasn’t a good sign.

“Sorry, did we interrupt you? We didn’t mean to.” The voice sounded like Martin’s, sure enough, but the tone wasn’t quite as genuinely apologetic as Jon would have expected if it were really Martin speaking.

The thing that looked like Jon glanced over at the thing that looked like Martin before directing its gaze back at Jon himself. “Was that the statement about Annabelle Cane just now?”

It was disconcerting, hearing something that sounded very much like his own voice coming out of another’s mouth.

“I don’t think that’s any of your business.” Jon tried to sound more confident than he felt, though he wasn’t sure whether he actually succeeded on that front.

He sneaked a glance at the tape recorder, which was still recording. Good. If this really was a murder attempt about to unfold, he’d very much appreciate having it recorded. If he died, he wanted the world to know how it happened.

“That’s back in, what, January 2017?” the not-Martin said, its eyes focused on the not-Jon.

“If this world even has the same timeline as ours did, yes.” the not-Jon replied.

“Please don’t tell me you’re going to try and sell this as some sort of- of time travel conspiracy, of all things.” Jon said. “I know better than that.”

Not-Jon and Not-Martin exchanged what looked to be a meaningful glance between them, though what exactly the meaning of it was was lost on Jon.

“Not time travel. Not exactly.” Not-Jon said. It even had Jon’s speech patterns down pat. Were they here to replace him--him and Martin? “Probably closer to dimensional travel, at a guess.”

Jon scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Oh, even better.”

“D’you think Helen knew-” Not-Martin started, his speech cut off by a shake of the head from Not-Jon.

“I think this is uncharted territory for all of us.” Not-Jon shifted its gaze from Not-Martin to Jon before adding, with a wry smile, “Probably good you came prepared to write all this down.”

Jon followed his doppelganger’s gaze and saw that the object he’d grabbed in his haste to find something, anything, to use as an impromptu weapon had in fact been a pen, a cheap pen that was one of probably about a dozen identical ones Jon had around his office at any given moment. It still had its cap on, too. There were probably worse impromptu weapons than a flimsy plastic pen that wasn’t even uncapped, but Jon couldn’t think of many, and his face heated up as he dropped the pen, suddenly aware of how feeble his attempt at self-defense truly had been.

“Who’s Helen?” Jon asked. There were more pressing questions on his mind than that one, admittedly, but that one seemed like it might actually get an answer, which he rather doubted would happen if he asked the doppelgangers what they were or what exactly they planned on doing to him and Martin.

Not-Jon blinked rapidly and raised its eyebrows in a passable imitation of confusion. “Oh, you haven’t met her yet?”

Jon thought silently for a moment. The only Helen he’d met recently was Helen Richardson, but she couldn’t be responsible for this, whatever “this” even was. She was a victim, a statement giver consumed more permanently after her escape from the corridors, not an eldritch being herself. Though perhaps these doppelgangers had encountered her while traversing Michael’s corridors... was Michael going to come back for these two like it had for Helen, or was it in on whatever they were planning?

Rather than explain his thought process fully to these alien beings, Jon simply shook his head.

“That’s different, then. Met her before the Cane statement myself, I’m pretty sure.” Not-Jon said.

“Different world, different rules...” Not-Martin replied.

“Perhaps. It does _feel_ different, but maybe that’s just because...” Not-Jon let its sentence trail off, punctuating it with a strange hand gesture that Jon couldn’t decipher the meaning of.

“Ah, yeah, right.”

“What are you here for? To kill me?”

Not-Martin paled at the question, but Not-Jon seemed to be stifling a laugh as it shook its head.

“I don’t think that would help, no, but if this really is early 2017-”

“It is.” Jon said. He still wasn’t keen on giving these intruders information, on helping them in any way, but confirming the date, at least, could be done a number of different ways without his assistance--hell, he was pretty sure it was visible on his computer screen right now, if you looked closely enough.

“Well then.” Not-Jon smiled, but it wasn’t a kind smile, exactly; Jon was reminded a bit of how smiles were abnormal in the animal kingdom, how for most animals baring your teeth like that was a show of aggression, an open threat. “I would _very_ much like to speak to Sasha James, please.”

Jon nodded numbly, his whole body shaking as he went to the door and opened it up to the rest of the Archives, though he couldn’t shake the feeling that he was making a deal with the devil here, that if he wasn’t about to die then it was only because one of his assistants was about to take his place.


	2. Chapter 2

Jon was half-tempted to slam his office door behind him, closing it and keeping the strange doppelgangers of himself and Martin stuck in his office for at least a moment longer, but... but that would only prevent the inevitable at this point, wouldn’t it? And besides, the lack of a regular door hadn’t stopped them from appearing in the first place... that might just invite further intrusion from Michael on top of everything else, and Jon could swear he felt his stab wound pang at just the thought of it.

Instead, Jon walked outside the door and a few steps towards Sasha’s desk before thinking better of it and standing still. Either these strange new intruders knew where things were already or they didn’t, but he didn’t want to make it any easier for them to infiltrate his Archives if he could avoid it.

As it turns out, both already knew exactly what they were looking for, as both the Not-Jon and Not-Martin passed by Jon, only stopping when they were both within arm’s reach of Sasha’s desk already.

“Sasha?”

The Not-Jon’s voice really did sound like his own, so it wasn’t much of a surprise that Sasha set down the file she was working on immediately, her head snapping up to face Not-Jon; the tone was loud and urgent enough that both Martin and Tim looked the same way, too.

Good. That was good, wasn’t it? Having more witnesses? Unless it meant they were all getting silenced for having seen whatever was about to happen to Sasha...

Jon took a few brisk steps forward, saying nothing but putting himself clearly within view of the others. If there was going to be a doppelganger of himself running around, they might as well know it as soon as possible, especially since Martin had his own doppelganger to consider as well.

“Jon?” Sasha didn’t seem especially agitated, but then, her voice always had seemed awfully calm. It fit her. Unruffled Sasha, always keeping her head in a crisis, rational and unemotional in a way Jon could never quite reach no matter how much he tried...

The Not-Jon bared its teeth again in another smile that was not quite a smile. “Yes and no.”

There was a long moment in which nothing was said, but all three assistants looked from Not-Jon to Jon and back, silently sizing up the situation. Tim glanced at Martin and Not-Martin as well, while Sasha, after a brief glance at Jon, remained fixed on his impostor.

Tim, surprisingly, was the one to break the silence. “What the hell is going on here?”

Not-Martin shook its head and sighed slightly.

Not-Jon leaned over, doing its best to loom over Sasha’s desk while restricted to Jon’s small frame, and smiled wider. “I’ll answer that question after I get an answer to this one: What happened to the real Sasha James?”

Sasha’s face paled, and her mouth set into a slight frown. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“But that _is_ Sasha.” Martin said.

“I wish it were, Martin.” Not-Jon’s dark eyes looked filled with... sorrow? Pity? Some emotion the thing probably couldn’t even really feel, at any rate. “Now... _tell me what the real Sasha James looked like_.”

Not-Jon punctuated his demand by slamming his hand down on Sasha’s desk, and Jon initially thought that Sasha’s strange twitching was in response to that, except that a few seconds passed and it only got worse over time...

“Fine.” Sasha spat the word out as her body finally stilled. “ _Fine_. You want to know what she was like? She was nothing like me. Taller than any of you lot, with long black curls, round hot pink glasses... and she was so, so weak when it really mattered. Taking her place was a _cinch_.”

Not-Jon’s smile widened, while Not-Martin looked up at it, an expression of concern on its face.

Martin looked like he was going to be sick, his face pale and his eyes slightly unfocused, a white-knuckled hand gripping the corner of his desk as if holding on for dear life.

Tim stood up in an instant. “Sasha, what are you talking about?”

“That isn’t Sasha.” Not-Jon said. “It hasn’t really been her for months now, not since Prentiss attacked.”

Tim considered this for a moment before sitting back down, his arms shaking and his sitting position somewhat askew. “Seriously? ... _Christ_.”

Sasha ( _was_ that Sasha?) and Not-Jon stared at each other for a long moment.

“You knew.” she said eventually.

“I did.” Not-Jon responded, its tone even and near-emotionless.

“I should have known, really, trying to hide in the Eye’s domain would fail one way or another...” Sasha (or, no, that wasn’t right, was it...) let out a bitter laugh; Jon couldn’t remember hearing anything like it before, didn’t think he’d heard her laugh much at all, let alone one quite like that. “But what are you going to do about it?”

“I’d like to make a suggestion.”

Jon turned to Not-Martin, and saw as he did that his weren’t the only eyes that turned to face Martin’s doppelganger as it rooted around in its bag before retrieving a very large, very sharp knife.

Sasha’s face--or, or _Not_ -Sasha’s face--went pale at the sight of it, as did Martin’s, and Tim stood up again, but before he could do anything more than stand Not-Jon shook his head.

“No, I don’t think so. We can do this another way.”

Jon cleared his throat before speaking. “A way that doesn’t get blood all over the Archives and doesn’t involve slaughtering one of my assistants?”

“That _thing_ was never really your assistant, and what would be spilled if we killed it wouldn’t be blood.”

Jon opened his mouth to speak, though he could feel bile climbing up his throat, but Not-Jon continued before Jon could think of the right words to voice.

“But yes, we can do this without violence. Martin, you can put the knife away, I’ve got this under control.”

Not-Martin put the knife away and a bit of the tension in the room ebbed away as it went out of sight, though Jon for one wasn’t going to forget easily that Not-Martin both had that knife on him and seemed awfully keen to use it.

“Before you do... whatever it is you’re going to do, can you explain what all of this is about in the first place?” Jon asked.

Not-Jon tilted its head slightly to one side. “You heard her admit it herself. That’s not the real Sasha James. When she took Sasha’s place, your memories changed so you only remember the impostor.”

Jon considered this for a minute. On the one hand, if Not-Jon was telling the truth, that meant Jon’s own memories had been altered without him knowing it--and if he didn’t remember his own archival assistant correctly, someone he’d worked with for over a year now, what else might he be misremembering without knowing it? On the other hand, the person he’d assumed until now was Sasha had said herself she was an impostor, so if Not-Jon was lying, so was she... unless Not-Jon had some way of getting people to tell lies, and that was why she’d hesitated and struggled before speaking up?

Impostor versus impostor... Jon wasn’t sure what to believe, but one way or another, it seemed that all his worst fears were being validated.

“I’m sure I could get Not-Sasha here to tell you more, if you’d like.” Not-Jon added.

 _Not-Sasha_. The same term Jon had just begun to use for her, the same way he had mentally referred to Not-Jon and Not-Martin since their appearance. Coincidence, proof of mental similarity, some sort of mind reading...? Jon couldn’t say for sure.

“Of course. You want my story, don’t you? You want a _statement_.” Something in Not-Sasha’s voice was cold and harsh, and that more than anything was what impressed upon Jon that this wasn’t the person he’d thought she was.

“That much hasn’t changed.” Not-Jon said with a hint of a laugh in its voice. “Now... _tell me your story, Not-Sasha_.”

The moment Not-Jon spoke its command, something felt different in the air--an electric hum, like rubbing your hands on a television monitor, and something in the background that sounded like... tape recorder static? Microphone feedback? Both at once? Not a natural sound, that much was for sure.

Not-Sasha froze in place. “What are you doing?”

Not-Jon’s gaze remained fixed on Not-Sasha, and it didn’t look to be blinking. “ _Tell me_.”

Not-Sasha didn’t move, exactly, but Jon could swear he saw part of her (its?) body _shift_ , fingers elongating, legs lengthening, every bit of her stretching ever so slightly. “Wh- no! Stop it!”

“ _ **No**_.”

The word echoed through the room for a long moment before being interrupted by a scream from Not-Sasha, Jon turning to watch just in time to see her implode out of existence altogether.

Not-Jon breathed heavily for a moment, taking several deep breaths before turning to Not-Martin. “I need a pen and paper. I’ve got to record this before it fades.”

“Right.” Not-Martin rummaged around in its bag, and for a brief, terrible moment Jon was convinced he was going to get out the knife again, but no, what he retrieved instead was a moleskin notebook and a nice-looking pen. “In your office?”

“Why not.”

And then the two of them went into Jon’s office, and by the time Jon thought to be outraged by it--that was _his_ office, damn it, not anybody else’s--they had closed the door behind them, and Jon heard the click of the lock being set.

Jon’s own set of keys were still _inside_ said office.

Jon let out a long sigh and walked over to join Tim and Martin, taking a seat at Sasha’s desk, which felt wrong but, well, the seat was available now...

“What just happened?” Tim asked. “If that wasn’t Sasha, what was it?”

“And why’s there people that look like us just walking around? What’s _their_ deal?” Martin added.

Jon massaged his forehead with his hands, though it did little to stop the headache quickly building there. “I don’t know, but I don’t think I like it.”


	3. Chapter 3

“'I don’t know’ isn’t an answer, boss.” Tim said.

“I don’t...” Jon continued to massage his temple, though it did him little good. “You know as much about what just happened as I do. I don’t have any answers for you.”

“That’s not true, and you know it.”

Martin’s tone was surprisingly forceful, something Jon heard so infrequently from him that his eyes swerved towards the still-closed door that Not-Martin had entered before looking over at Martin himself.

“What do you mean?”

“You were in there with those, those doppelgangers of us. They came out of your office, but I know I didn’t see them enter. So where did they come from in the first place?”

“They, uh.” Jon sighed softly, giving up on massaging his head for the moment and settling for fidgeting with his hands in his lap instead. “They came out of Michael’s door.”

“Michael?”

“Did I not tell you about him? That’s the name of the thing that Sasha met, back before Prentiss attacked... well, Michael’s probably not its real name, but it’s the one it gave Sasha, anyway. Hands are way too big and sharp, appears out of nowhere... it seemed to know about the worms being weak to CO2 somehow...”

Tim was staring right at Jon with a gaze so intense Jon could feel the weight of it, could almost feel it burning on his skin. “I don’t remember Sasha mentioning a _door_.”

“No, you’re right, she, she didn’t, that was Helen Richardson... she was, uh, a statement giver from a few months back, entered my office and then never came back out... she went through Michael’s door when she was leaving, and I didn’t even notice until it came to brag about it...”

Jon felt like his stomach was tied in a knot, one that tightened when he remembered that he’d lied to his assistants about that particular incident, tried to cover the whole thing up for fear of showing weakness to his potential murderer. Well, given what he’d just learned about Sasha, maybe he hadn’t been entirely off the mark with his suspicions there...

“He also, uh, stabbed me. With his bare hands. Like I said, they’re weirdly sharp, for hands... that’s, that’s what really happened to give me that bad cut back then.”

“So that’s the real story there! I _knew_ you couldn’t cut yourself on a bread knife like that.”

Jon couldn’t bring himself to meet Martin’s eyes, instead staring at an unexceptional bit of the floor as he responded. “I’ve managed that before, actually. That’s where I got the idea.”

“But bad enough to need _five stitches_ , Jon?”

“...no, not _that_ badly.”

“What about Sasha?”

As Jon looked over at Tim, he realized that Tim was fidgeting nearly as energetically as he himself was, and that his face was deathly pale.

“How long has that... that _thing_ been Sasha?”

“I don’t...” Jon stopped himself, sighing softly before continuing on a different track. True as it was, continuing to point out that he didn’t know what was going on here seemed unlikely to help and might just irritate Tim further. “The, the thing that looks like me said it’d been since Prentiss attacked. Something must have happened then, if it was telling the truth.”

“But they’re not connected, are they? Prentiss is- is bugs, and filth, and some creepy kind of love, and that-” Tim slumped back in his seat. “I keep trying to picture Sasha in my mind, based on what that thing said she looked like before being replaced, but... it messed with our memories, right? It must have.”

Jon emulated Tim’s posture, slumping back in his seat ( _Sasha’s_ seat) as well. “And now we can’t be sure _any_ of our memories are real, can we?”

“Or that any of you are real, and not some spooky supernatural imposter.” Tim added. “Especially since you two have those running around already--guess I’m just too awesome to imitate, huh?”

Tim let out something that was probably meant to be a laugh at the end of his speech, but Jon didn’t believe it, didn’t trust it.

“Hang on, there has to be a way we can prove that at least.” Martin said.

Jon nodded solemnly. “Let’s think about it. There has to be some way I can prove it’s really me, that I’m the real Jon and the one who locked himself in my office just now-” Jon couldn’t help but let some bitterness creep into his tone, as while there was quite a lot going on at the moment, he was still irked that those things had claimed _his_ office as their staging ground for... whatever it was they were planning. “Is... well, is not.”

“I rather doubt it, actually.”

Jon was glad to see that he wasn’t the only one who visibly startled at the sound of his own voice. Apparently Not-Jon and Not-Martin were done with whatever business they’d been up to, and both were standing near the archival assistants’ desks.

Jon wondered, idly, how long the imposters had been listening in on their conversation without any of them noticing.

Jon looked pointedly at the thing that insisted on imitating his form and raised an eyebrow. “Really?”

“Yes. First off, unless things have terribly changed from what I remember, you’ve barely shared any of the personal stuff that might count as proof of your identity with either Tim or Martin yet. Secondly, even if you had, you can’t trust memories of any heart-to-hearts you’ve had with your coworkers--after all, Sasha seemed normal enough until I confronted her, didn’t she? You thought that was what Sasha had always been like. And finally, in this particular case, even if you come up with proof, it can’t be used to distinguish between the two of us because I know everything you know.”

“Because you’re me from the future.” Jon said flatly, doing all he could to make his disbelief shine through in his tone of voice.

“The future, yes, or a dimension whose timeline is significantly ahead of yours, but is otherwise practically identical; the difference between the two is basically just splitting hairs.”

“So how do we know anything’s real, or any _one_?” Martin was the one who spoke the words, but Jon wholeheartedly agreed with the sentiment behind them. “How do we know _you’re_ not the real monsters, and you just did something to her to make her act like that?”

“Logically, you don’t. You’re just going to have to...” Not-Jon paused for a moment, looking over at Not-Martin for a long moment before continuing its speech. “...to trust one another a bit more.”

Tim snorted with a combination of amusement and disbelief. Jon sighed and rested one hand against his head again.

Martin opened his mouth, closed it, and then opened it again to say, “That’s a bit of a tall order at the moment.”

Not-Martin replied, with a wry half-grin on its face, “Trust me, we’re well aware of that much.”


	4. Chapter 4

“You want to talk about trust, about sharing things with each other?” Jon stood up from his seat-- _Sasha’s_ seat, a place he never should have had to occupy, a place he never _would_ have occupied if it weren’t for the intruders in their midst--and looked right at Not-Jon (and Not-Martin, by proxy, since the two were standing side by side, nearly touching now). “Fine. You go first. Why are you here?”

“We’re from-” Not-Jon began, but Jon cut him off.

“The future, or a dimension that’s essentially the future? Yes, I got that much already, thank you. Why did you come here from there?”

“We didn’t _mean_ to.” Not-Martin said.

“Martin!”

Jon looked over at Martin when he heard his own voice call Martin’s name; Martin, for his part, was looking right back at him with an expression that seemed somewhere between surprised and terrified, but it was Not-Martin that spoke up.

“Look, Jon, I’m not going to just- just _lie_ to them about what happened-”

“I didn’t _say_ that, did I? I just meant-”

Even before he looked over, Jon could feel Tim and Martin’s gazes darting between him and the actual speakers, Not-Jon and Not-Martin, who apparently also used the names Jon and Martin for one another as well as having the same voices that the actual Jon and Martin did...

“Can we start by having you two pick different names? _We’re_ -” Jon waved his arm in a sweeping gesture to indicate that he was including Martin in particular. “-already using Jon and Martin at the moment, as it happens.”

“I’m not going to stop calling him-” Not-Jon gestured towards Not-Martin, and Jon noted with a sinking stomach that the gesture was eerily similar to the one he himself had just made. “-Martin. That’s his _name_.”

“Fine, then, you two can call each other whatever, but we need something for the rest of us to call you, unless you want me to just keep thinking of you as Not-Me and Not-Martin for as long as you’re here.”

Not-Jon and Not-Martin both paled visibly at the words; Jon wondered, idly, what their own experiences with Not-Sasha were, if they really were from the future, presumably one where she hadn’t been so suddenly unmasked by another duo of imposters. Probably not terribly pleasant, judging from the grimaces on both their faces.

Not-Jon nodded once. “Fair enough. Perhaps just a variation of your name that you don’t normally use would work--Sims, perhaps, or Jonathan...”

Jon shook his head. “No. Those are still my name, and you’re still not getting any part of my identity out of this.”

Not-Martin let out a soft sigh and a slight shrug of the shoulders. “Did _you_ have something in mind, then? I mean, it is your plan and all...”

“Er...”

Jon had not in fact had anything in particular in mind, had only a nebulous idea of what he _didn’t_ want these doppelgangers going by, but as he thought about it, an idea came to mind.

“You want a version of my name that badly? You can be Jonny. Nobody’s called me that for some time now, so there should be no chance of confusion.”

Not-Jon--no, _Jonny_ let out a rough laugh. “Fine by me, though don’t think I don’t know what you’re doing there. But if you insist, I will be Jonny D’Ville,” Jonny leaned forward in an exaggerated bow. “Your _humble_ captain.”

Jon could feel his face heating up, which only intensified as he heard Tim call out “First mate!” from his seat nearby.

Jon was only able to stammer out a soft “That works” before Tim spoke up again, this time looking Jon’s way as he spoke.

“Hang on, since when do you know about the Mechanisms? Don’t tell me you only get won over by my musical tastes in the _future_ -”

Jonny replied with a quick “No” before Jon could bring himself to do the same.

“So what’s the story, then? You said you weren’t into them!”

Jon let out a sigh before responding. “Technically, what I said was I wasn’t in the habit of listening to their CDs.”

“Close enough. Did you just change your mind, or what?”

Jon looked away from Tim, only to see Jonny was gazing his way as well.

“You might as well tell him.” Jonny was grinning and looked a bit like he was trying to stifle a laugh.

“Tell me what?”

He wasn’t getting out of this one, now, was he?

Jon pinched the bridge of his nose and closed his eyes briefly. “I’m pretty sure most musicians aren’t in the habit of listening to CDs of their own work, Tim.”

“You’re... you’re saying you were in the Mechanisms.” Tim’s gaze darted between Jon and Jonny. “You’re saying you’re _Jonny fucking D’Ville_?”

“...yes.”

Tim raised an eyebrow. “Prove it, then.”

Jon did his best to mimic the gesture as he looked back at Tim. “Why would I lie about this?”

“I mean, either you were lying _then_ or you’re lying _now_ , so...”

“It wasn’t technically...” Jon let his speech trail off as he realized that fighting over the point was probably detrimental to the whole trust thing Jonny was trying to encourage in them. (Had he predicted this happening, or even somehow orchestrated the whole thing?)

“Alright. Alright, I’ll prove it.”

And then Jon began to chant. It was the first thing that came to mind that would serve as proper proof, not just something that would show his vocal talents but something that even most fans of the band wouldn’t have bothered to memorize...

“Y'AI 'NG'NGAH, YOG-SOTHOTH H'EE-L'GEB F'AI THRODOG UAAAH-”

Jon was pretty sure he heard somebody quietly laughing in the background, though he couldn’t recognize the laugh by sound alone and didn’t want to look around, didn’t want to see all the strange expressions that must be on everybody’s faces just to know who the culprit was.

“-OGTHROD AI'F GEB'L-EE'H YOG-SOTHOTH 'NGAH'NG AI'Y ZHRO-”

Jon did, however, glance over at Jonny briefly, only to see that not only was he not the one laughing, he was either mouthing or singing along to the chant. (It was hard to say which, especially when Jon knew well enough that Jonny’s voice would sound the same as his own, so he couldn’t just listen for a different voice joining in.)

Jon went on for another line or two of chanting before trailing off, looking over at a dumbfounded Tim with a half-suppressed grin on his face.

“Is that proof enough for you?”

There was silence for a moment before Martin spoke up. “...what kind of band is this, exactly?”

Jon looked over at Jonny, though he couldn’t say exactly why, but Jonny just shook his head. “Think you can handle this one on your own.”

“It’s a, a band of immortal space pirates that all live on the same spaceship, Jonny D’Ville being the lead singer and, and also the first mate, they tell stories based on folklore and mythology but all adapted for a science fiction setting...”

“God, you’re talented.”

Jon glanced at Not-Martin first before finding the actual source of the words in Martin, whose face was rapidly reddening as he added, “Well, I mean, I, I knew that already of course, but... Musically. I didn’t know you were so _musically_ talented.”

Jon let out a harsh laugh. “If you think _I’m_ talented, you should meet Morgan. He played four different instruments for the band-- _four_! All I can do is sing and work the harmonica a bit.”

“Still...”

“Why didn’t you just tell me about all this when it came out before?” Tim interrupted. “You knew I liked the band, after all, so why not just take the credit?”

“I, uh.” Jon could feel his face heating up again. “It, it was shortly after I got promoted, and I just, I didn’t think-”

“Oh, I see. You didn’t think being part of an awesome band of space pirates fit the image you were going for as ‘Jonathan Sims, Head Archivist of the Magnus Institute, London’, is that it?”

Jon wasn’t sure what to focus on--the truth of Tim’s accusation and how petty and simple those worries about his professional image seemed now, how eerily accurate Tim’s impression of how Jon started every statement tape was, how he could hear his own voice softly laughing as Jonny quietly cracked up...

Jon settled for resting his face in his own hands such that he could avoid looking at anyone.

“So we’ve got _my_ name settled, then.” Jonny said, the voice enough to get Jon to look up again. “But what about Martin-- _my_ Martin, I mean?”

Was there something weirdly possessive in the way Jonny said _my_ Martin, like they were a unit, two halves of a whole, or was Jon imagining it?

“Er.”

“Um.”

The two Martins stared at least other for a long moment, neither one rushing to give a response, and Jon couldn’t help but laugh at the sight of it. If their story was a lie, if this other Martin was just an imitation of the real thing, Jon had to admit that it was an awfully good imitation.

“Kay?”

It took Jon a moment to recognize that Not-Martin hadn’t just abbreviated the word “okay” there, was in fact proposing Kay as a name for himself. Kay as in the letter, presumably, as in the middle initial in Martin K. Blackwood that Jon still didn’t know the full version of, even though he’d done rather a lot of research into his coworkers in the last few months...

Martin hesitated for a moment before tersely nodding. “Yeah, Kay, that works for me if it works for you.”

“I wouldn’t have suggested it if it didn’t work for me, would I?”

“...fair point.”

“Sounds like we’ve got that settled then. I’m Jonny, and he’s Kay, at least as far as you lot are concerned.”

“Who are you calling ‘you lot’?” Tim asked. “And why don’t I get a freaky supernatural future double like you two do, anyway?”

Jonny and Kay exchanged a glance before the latter spoke up.

“...I think we’d better save that particular story for a bit later on.”


	5. Chapter 5

“So there’s a _story_ behind it, is there?” Tim said with a strange grin on his face.

“Yes, but it’s one that you’re not getting that easily, so knock it off.” Jonny replied.

“Maybe you could write a _song_ about it, since you’ve apparently secretly been a kickass songwriter this whole time-”

“Only if _you_ write a song about the incident that brought you to the Institute in the first place.” Jonny shot back.

Tim’s wry grin faded at that, and he went quiet, quiet and unnaturally pale.

“What is he-” Jon started to ask, but was cut off by Jonny shaking his head.

“Don’t ask questions.”

“I beg your pardon-” Jon said, his voice betraying his indignation, but Jonny cut him off again.

“I mean that literally, Jon, don’t ask people questions, not unless you’re positive you want to know the answer no matter what--and Tim deserves to tell his story, or _not_ to tell his story, in his own time.”

Jon opened his mouth, realized that he didn’t know what he wanted to say, and closed it again.

Kay gently nudged Jonny. “And you gave _me_ lip about giving away too much?”

“Sharing how we got here is one thing, stopping him from stealing a friend’s trauma is another entirely in my book.”

“Is it even that far along yet?”

“Do you want us to find out the hard way?”

Jon cleared his throat to get Jonny and Kay to stop talking and redirect their attention to him. “Look, if you two are going to just stand around being all cryptic and ominous, can you at least go do it somewhere besides my archives?”

That at least shut Jonny and Kay up for a good minute or so, though eventually Jonny burst out into soft laughter.

“...god, I forgot how much of an arse I used to be.”

“Ex _cuse_ me?”

Kay looked over at Jonny and spoke up as if Jon hadn’t so much as said a word. “Yeah, you were, but you had your reasons for it.”

“True, but I thought killing Not-Sasha would put to rest most of that paranoia... did you ever get any of that?”

“I don’t... think so?” Kay shook his head. “Not like you did, at any rate.”

(Jon, who had realized by now that speaking up would either get him insulted again or lead to Kay and Jonny speaking over him again, just stood there, silently fuming, disappointed but not especially surprised that neither Martin nor Tim were willing to jump in to his defense.)

“That makes sense, I suppose. _You_ didn’t have half-formed Eye powers in the back of your head going ‘someone you work with killed the last Archivist, someone you work with wants to kill _you_ , you better watch your back’ the whole time, after all...”

“Wait.” Jon tapped his foot on the ground repeatedly, partly to get everybody’s attention again but partly just as a way of getting out the energy that was starting to build up within him. “I don’t get everything you’re saying here-”

Jonny muttered “I wouldn’t expect you to,” but you know what, it was about time for _Jonny_ to be the one getting ignored here, now, wasn’t it?

“-but, if you’re saying... that thing, that Not-Sasha, it wanted to kill me, right? Are you saying she... it... was what killed Gertrude, too?”

Jonny laughed, but this time it didn’t feel like a bitter laugh, at least. It felt more like he was laughing _with_ Jon now instead of _at_ him, save for the minor detail that Jon himself wasn’t laughing. “Oh, no, that thing had nothing to do with Gertrude’s death. That was all Elias’ doing.”

“Seriously, Jon?” Kay said, though Jonny answered him only with a wry shake of the head.

“I... wait, but...” Jon took a deep breath, tried to ignore that his hands were shaking, that his leg was still tapping out a rhythm on the floor beneath him seemingly of its own accord. “But why would _Elias_ kill Gertrude?”

Jonny broke into a wide grin that Jon absolutely didn’t trust.

“What a wonderful question.” Jonny’s tone even sounded a little like Elias’, there, when Elias was clearly trying to blow him off rather than actually answer his questions. _Lovely._ “You know, if you want us out of the Archives so badly, I suppose we could go ask him that very question ourselves.”

“‘We’, I assume, meaning yourself and Kay?”

“Right in one.”

“Wait, why _both_ of us?” Kay asked. “If we’re going to go talk to Elias now, why not have just one of us go while the other keeps watch down here?”

“Honestly? I don’t trust either of us to not just kill the bastard if we go in alone. If we go in together, we can hold each other back.”

“...fair point.”

“Wait, you’re going to go kill Elias?” Martin was so pale that Jon was honestly rather concerned about his wellbeing at this point; he hadn’t looked quite this bad even after _Prentiss_.

Kay shook his head. “No, we’re going together to make sure we _don’t_ kill Elias when talking to him.”

“At least not yet, anyway.” Jonny added. “Think we can leave our stuff here?”

“I mean, I doubt they’d do anything too bad with it...”

Jon glared at the two of them. “Is any of that ‘stuff’ going to end up... I don’t know, blowing this place to kingdom come while you’re conveniently gone?”

Kay gulped, but Jonny just laughed again. “No, if we’re going to get rid of the Archives, I think we’ll have to do something a bit subtler than that.”

Kay gently elbowed Jonny’s arm. “Jon!”

“Martin?”

Jonny and Kay looked at one another, the two smiling as they headed up the stairs leading out of the Archives and out of view.

As they disappeared, Jon let out a long, low sigh.


	6. Chapter 6

A brief moment passed in which Jon, Martin, and Tim all sat in silence before Tim finally spoke up.

“I still want to know why I don’t have my own spooky future double.”

“Perhaps it has to do with the ‘incident’ that apparently led to you being employed here in the first place.” The words came out sharper than Jon had intended; honestly, he was more surprised that his recent investigation into his archival assistants hadn’t uncovered anything about this so-called “incident” than anything else.

“It had _better_ not.” Tim’s tone matched Jon’s own in sharpness. “If it does, well, ‘Jonny’ and ‘Kay’ will deserve what’s coming to them.”

“Wh-”

Jon stopped himself mid-word. Jonny had warned him against asking questions outright, and while Jon certainly didn’t _trust_ Jonny and his cryptic warnings, when the best case scenario was “ask a friend about a probably-sensitive topic” and the worst case scenario was supposedly “steal a friend’s trauma” (whatever _that_ meant), it probably didn’t hurt to be a bit more circumspect in his approach.

“I’m curious about this ‘incident’ Jonny mentioned, and what he knows about it that I don’t.”

“Of course you are.” Tim’s voice wasn’t as sharp as before, but there was still an undercurrent of bitterness within it.

“Jonny, er, said it involved trauma. A traumatic experience, then.”

Tim let out a bark of a laugh. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it.”

“And, and given that it brought you _here_ , I’m guessing it has some connection to the supernatural.”

“Yup.” Tim popped the P at the end of the word.

“So, you came to the Magnus Institute because of a traumatizing encounter with supernatural forces.” A statement, not a question.

“Jon...” Martin said. Jon could hear the unspoken warning in Martin’s voice, but he wasn’t about to let that stop him.

Tim looked away from Jon, pointedly staring at an unexceptional patch of wall as he responded. “Yeah, that’s right. Does it matter?”

“Well. Erm.” Jon cleared his throat before continuing. “I suppose that makes two of us, then.”

“Wait, _two_ of you?” Jon hadn’t expected Martin to be the first one to respond to that statement, and he certainly hadn’t expected the bewilderment in Martin’s voice.

“Sorry, should- should that be three of us, then?”

“What? No, I just- _both_ of you dealt with the supernatural before coming here?”

Jon and Tim exchanged a tense glance before nodding nearly in unison.

“Jesus, am I the only one whose first run-in with that stuff was with Prentiss?”

“Maybe Sasha-” Jon started, but Tim shook his head and interrupted before Jon could finish his train of thought.

“Sasha worked in Artifact Storage when she got here, remember? She knows- she _knew_ as much as any of us did about all this. And look where that got her.”

“If she knew the most of any of us, and she still...” Jon couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, to acknowledge that Sasha was gone, to admit that the “Sasha” he thought he knew had apparently been an imposter for months now. “What hope do the rest of us have?”

Another silence filled the room for a long moment, this one gloomier than the last.

“The only thing we have going for us that she didn’t is that apparently I have some, some kind of power, if Jonny’s telling the truth, something to do with asking questions... Perhaps we should test that, see how far it can go, in case I need to use it down the line.”

Martin and Tim exchanged a glance, but neither of them said a word.

“Would either of you be willing to volunteer?”

Both Martin and Tim quickly said “No,” though Tim’s response was half a beat faster than Martin’s.

“Why not?”

Tim made a face before repeating Jon’s words in a bitter tone. “Why _not_?”

“Yes, Tim. For all we know this power might be the only thing saving us from... from the next Prentiss, perhaps, or another thing like the one that got Sasha. Why not see what it’s good for here and now, so we know what the limits are _before_ it comes down to some life or death situation?”

“Why _should_ we?” Tim’s words came out fast and quick. “Why should we go along with being your guinea pigs in some spooky magic experiment just so _you_ can get something out of it? A spooky experiment based on the words of someone you obviously don’t trust in the first place, no less!”

Tim stood up, shoving his chair roughly aside and throwing his hands in the air. “Though I don’t see why you don’t trust Jonny, I mean, it’s not like Jonny stalked your house and took _pictures_ of it, or, or accused you of being a _murderer_ for some reason, after you’d been friends for _years_... what the hell would we even get out of killing you, anyway? Because if you think we want your job, believe me, I want _no_ part of this mess, I would quit in a damn heartbeat if I could...”

As Tim’s speech slowed to a halt, he pulled his chair back towards him, the chair making a loud noise as it was dragged against the tile floor, before collapsing in it. He was shaking slightly by the time he stopped speaking, though after a brief moment he spoke up again, looking Jon right in the eye as he did so.

“I... I didn’t mean to say all of that.”

It took a moment for Jon to realize what Tim meant by that, but once he did, his stomach sank.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to-”

“Oh, you’re sorry. You’re _sorry_ you used your spooky magic to make me spill my guts. Well, that makes it alright then, doesn’t it?”

“Tim, Jon, can-”

“I didn’t _say_ it was alright, but-”

“Jonny tells you not to ask people questions, and what’s the first thing you go and do?”

“It wasn’t the _first_ thing I did, we had an entire _conversation_ -”

“Will you two stop fighting and realize what this actually _means_?”

Martin’s voice came out sharper than Jon was used to, and the unexpected harshness in his tone was enough to get both him and Tim to quiet down.

“What are you talking about?”

“Jonny was right, clearly, about the whole question thing. He knew something about you, something you could do, something that you didn’t even know about yourself yet! Even if he was, was some sort of mind reader or something, he couldn’t manage that much. So isn’t this proof that _maybe_ Jonny and Kay are telling the truth about all this?”

Jon thought for a moment. “Well... either they’re telling the truth, or the rabbit hole goes even deeper than I thought.”

Jon didn’t see who, but he heard somebody else let out a long, dramatic sigh.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, consider following me on tumblr at [haberdashing](https://haberdashing.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
